


Aphrodite

by Deejaymil



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Adultery, Angst, Changing Tenses, Dom/sub Undertones, Explicit Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Mutual self-destruction, Non-Chronological, Rough Sex, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-10 22:30:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11701167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deejaymil/pseuds/Deejaymil
Summary: There's nothing kind about this anymore.





	Aphrodite

**Author's Note:**

> Spencer’s never kind about what they’re doing. He never lessens it. Always cutting but they haven’t stopped yet, and Aaron’s pretty sure he’s not capable of stopping now.

“Eros is always a desire to possess, even if it appears to be altruistic in nature,” Spencer murmurs, and then he ducks his head and brings Aaron to his knees. Nimble fingers and a nimbler tongue, he’s sharp and savage and cruel and ferocious, and Aaron agrees. There’s nothing altruistic about this. He winds his own fingers tightly through the waves of curls in front of him and digs his nails deep. This is all about possession. It’s about owning the man in front of him. It’s about regaining agency over his own fucking life and everything that tries to bring him down without half the pleasure involved; he has a wife and kid waiting at home and he’s still here.

He’s still here.

Where is here?

Here is a backwater motel, the kind of drive-by and forget shithole favoured by crackheads and hookers and men hiding secrets. And this is a secret, all of it. It’s a gorgeous darkling secret made of dusty curtains and silent undressing and watching the other man arch out in front of him with his chest flushed red and his bitten mouth open wide. The room they’re in is loud with everything they’re not saying: the bed complaining about what they’re doing, the thump of the headboard on the thin wall, the shriek of an argument next door, Spencer’s soft little _ah_ s of shocked pleasure, the slick slap of skin on skin. Aaron focuses on a battered bible being used to prop up the bedside table, and comes first.

“I love my wife,” he wants to lie as Spencer whines and shifts so his hand is hidden under his torso, his skin twitching as he brings himself over the edge. Aaron watches blankly as the man whines and bucks and adds to the mess they’ve made of the cheap linen under them. There’s evidence of what they’re doing making a slick line down the back of Spencer’s bare thigh, the narrow fingers of one hand curling deep into the sheets, his shoulders bowed forward and the shadowed profile of his face barely visible as his mouth moves without making any sound. He’s saying something. Talking to himself.

Aaron traces his finger along that slick line, all the way up. Outlines the shape of the other man’s ass. Finds where he’s left red crescent-shapes with his nails where buttock meets back and adds another as his fingers bite down.

“Ah,” Spencer breathes, jerking forward, over-sensitive and shaking still. His hand drops, shiny-wet, onto the bed. “ _Aaron_.”

It’s the first time they’ve spoken since Aaron had announced to the others that he and Spencer would be driving back from the case together. “Motel?” Spencer had murmured, and Aaron had nodded jerkily. “Do you need it?”

Another nod. And an, “Okay,” that was dark and hungry and maybe Spencer needed it too.

“I love my wife,” he tries once more, but instead he snarls a little and says, “Again.”

“Anything you need,” Spencer chokes out, his head dropping forward again to hide that his pupils are blown wide and that he’s bitten through his swollen lip biting back desire. “Anything, Aaron, _anything_ ,” and his hips twitch forward despite being nowhere near ready to go again.

“No names,” Aaron says coldly.

“Anything,” mewls Spencer.

It’s selfish. It’s hurting them all. Afterwards, he’ll let Spencer shower alone because to care for him here is too close to where they’ve both been raw. Then he’ll drive him to the closest diner that sells the stickiest, unhealthiest waffles around and let the man talk about anything he wants after buying him dinner. They won’t touch, but Spencer knows that if he wanted it, they would. A kiss, a brush of hands: if he asks it, Aaron will give it. Anything he needs. It’s not enough to make up for this. It’s nowhere near enough. But it’s something.

Aaron can’t stop because he knows that without it, he’ll shatter.

 

* * *

 

It started in a hospital room. Not with sex, not at first. It started with dragging Reid kicking and screaming out of his own grave, and it started with walking into that room and finding no Reid within. Just bags packed on the bed ready to leave and a wheelchair there waiting.

It started with worry and it started with hearing a strained huff of air from someone holding back pain in the adjourning bathroom. He’d walked in and found Reid pressed back against the wall looking for all as though Hankel was waiting outside the door, staring at Hotch like he was the enemy Reid had been waiting for. It was disgustingly symbolic, Hotch had thought grimly, that what truly started this whole thing was the clear glass bottles rolling on the bruised skin of Reid’s palm.

Hotch had stepped forward, snapped his hand around that thin wrist hard enough to add to the bruises already there. The bottles fell—one smashed underfoot. And he was angry.

He was so angry.

And something else.

Whatever quiet part of Reid that had bowed to Hotch’s every whim beforehand wasn’t here anymore. Maybe it had died back on that dirty shack floor, filthy with piss and blood and spit and death. Instead, the fear on Reid’s face had vanished and he’d cocked his chin back mockingly, staring Hotch right in the eye.

“Are you angry because you feel like you’ve failed me or because you can’t control me?” he’d asked, and Hotch had realized he was too late for this round anyway.

“You’re high,” Hotch had replied coldly. “Stupid.” He’d crowded forward, pressed close, the anger he’d wanted to lash out at Hankel with brimming. “You’re not destroying yourself like that. I’ll be damned before I let you.”

And whatever darkness Reid was facing had faded for a moment, leaving him tired. “I’ll fight you on that,” he’d murmured, letting his head loll forward. For a moment, in Hotch’s embrace again. “I already want too much.”

He’d smelled of hospital soap and unfamiliar hands.

_So do I,_ Hotch had realized, and stepped back to hide this wanting. _So do I._

Three weeks later, they fucked for the first time. Reid was high. Hotch wasn’t. If there was judgement at the end of this, Hotch knew he’d be found wanting. Reid said it best. Hotch never wanted as fiercely as he did when Reid was fighting him. They spent volatile nights circling each other as Hotch tried to chase the demons from Reid’s back, and Reid tried to share them. This night Reid went ahead anyway. Hotch took the hypodermic from his hand, broke it in the sink, and when Reid tried to shove past him to leave, he pressed the man against the wall and kissed him like he was breaking. The sex hurt, the after hurt more, and Reid quietly mocked him in the voice he only used when he was withdrawing: “You know, Aphrodite is portrayed in the Odyssey as preferring Ares over her even-tempered husband because she’s attracted to his volatility.” Hotch stared and Reid continued, savage: “Are you even attracted to me or just to the challenge of regaining the control you’ve lost over my life?”

Hotch didn’t reply, but he pictured very vividly what Reid would look like submitting to that control. He came first with his fingers digging hard into the sheets of the bed.

He didn’t tell Haley and he didn’t say no and he knew they’d do it again.

 

* * *

 

He takes Spencer to the beach after Emily’s death. It’s winter with the grey-tipped waves slamming the rocky shore in front of the beach-house they’ve rented. It’s a silly, frivolous thing, but they’re shaken and Aaron needs to know if he still has this in hand. And maybe this trip isn’t only about him.

They’re here for a week and, for the first three days, Spencer sits on the porch in the cold and says nothing, just watches the waves. He’s unshaven and pink-nosed and ruddy-cheeked, his face sallow from grief. Away from the team, he’s not hiding how broken he is, and Aaron doesn’t know what to do.

“Come inside,” he orders, and Spencer ignores him. Just huddles closer into the wicker chair and takes a deep breath of the salt-laced air. Seabirds scream overhead. There’s dry seaweed tangled around the table-leg of the outdoor setting he’s hunched at. It’s been years since Spencer ignored a direct command, so Aaron goes back inside and wonders if this is the end of them.

On the fourth day, he goes out there with intent. “She’s dead, you’re not,” he half-lies savagely, and Spencer looks at him for the first time since they buried an empty coffin. “Get up. Come inside. You need food, and a shower.”

“Leave me alone,” Spencer says, but there’s no bite in his voice and his eyes are desperate. “Just leave me alone.”

Aaron considers listening, but he doesn’t think that’s what Spencer needs right now. He steps close, says, “Get _up_ ,” with a snap in his tone and stares the other man down.

“No,” is the mulish reply. “You can’t—”

He can. They have a safe-word and this isn’t sexual, but Aaron has a feeling it’s going to tip that way because they’ve never really gotten past just being cocks to each other. If Spencer uses it, he’ll let him go. He’ll leave him there. He’ll let go of the arm that’s firmer than it used to be but still skinnier than it should be and let the man grieve. He won’t haul him up onto his feet and drag him, shouting and resisting, to the front door.

But Spencer doesn’t, and so he does. At the door, Spencer uses his shoulder to brace himself in the frame, turning like an otter in his arms until he’s dangerously close to Aaron’s face and every iota of the anger he’s feeling is transfixing Aaron in place. They’re wrapped together, muscles bunching as they push against each other, fingers digging in hard into easily-bruised skin. And Spencer is hard. He’s hard and panting and Aaron shivers when he realizes _this is what he wanted all along._

“She’s dead, you’re not,” Aaron repeats.

Spencer’s eyes are desperate, like he wants to break and doesn’t know how. “Prove it,” he murmurs.

The afternoon turns hazy, slow. Oozing and viscous, like the minutes are dripping like honey through an hourglass. One step and they’re upstairs, in the cluttered bathroom and he’s stripping the other man down. He strips too, purely for the sense of power it gives him to stand nonchalantly naked in front of the shyer man. Spencer is sweaty, unkempt, and he only resists a little as Aaron manhandles him into the shower and paces like a jailkeeper as the man washes his body and hair. “No,” is all he says, when Spencer reaches for clothes after.

Spencer shivers, his pupils blown wide and dick almost painfully hard, but he drops his hand obediently. Not fighting for the first time that day. Aaron steps close. “Good,” he tells him, and brings his palm to stroke twice along that silky-warm length. Spencer’s skin twitches, a thoroughbred at the starting line, his eyes focused past Aaron’s shoulders. He’s still scruffy around the jaw and his hair is knotted. It untangles easily when Aaron drags his fingers through it, the only benefit of his disastrously short haircut.

“What do you want?” Aaron breathes, not wanting to be misread in this moment. He’s a little thrown by how easily Spencer had caved when it seemed like all he wanted to do was fight.

A tentative shrug is his answer. “I don’t know,” Spencer says numbly. And Aaron takes control.

He makes him kneel, with a towel folded under his legs to stop the wooden floors from bruising them. “I’m going to shave this,” he warns him, brushing his fingers once more on that stubbly jaw and smiling as Spencer’s eyes flicker hungrily, “but first you’re going to earn it. You couldn’t do this if you’d died, could you?”

Spencer shakes his head. He knows better than to talk now, his eyes following the curve of Aaron’s cock. He knows better than to touch himself, as Aaron steps forward and guides his mouth down over it. He’s a hot, wet pressure and any reticence is gone as Spencer relaxes under Aaron’s hand and lets himself be led. It’s faster than Aaron would like—he’s keyed up and comes quickly as soon as Spencer’s hips begin shifting unconsciously underneath him. “Good, you’re so good,” Aaron praises, using his thumb to wipe a thread of white from Spencer’s lips, shivering as Spencer watches him with hungry eyes. “Bathroom. Your turn.”

He’s true to his word. He uses a warm washcloth and his fastidiously sharpened straight razor. Spencer is silent and languid under his hands. The rhythmic swipe of razor on skin, revealing fresh, clean face underneath, is hypnotic. This isn’t anything that Aaron’s ever fantasized about, but he knows that Spencer is helplessly aroused by the idea of giving someone this much power. But he continues being good. He doesn’t touch, even as he leaks a spreading pool of pre-come on himself from wanting so bad. Aaron knows what will happen next. They’re even right now, but Spencer needs an anchor. At least right now, even isn’t what he wants.

He’ll take the man to bed and make him beg. Make him plead. Make him tell Aaron exactly how much he wants to be possessed. It’s dark and reveals dangerous shades of Aaron that he doesn’t overly want to consider, but until Spencer is panting and flushed and spread out open under him, Aaron is determined to do just that. To own.

“Mine,” he hisses, pushing home and claiming him in three long, deep strokes that are slightly too long and slightly too deep for this early on. Spencer whines in pain, but Aaron is careful that he doesn’t hurt him too badly. “You’re mine. And you’re _alive_.”

“Yes,” Spencer replies, his hips jerking out of rhythm. “Ah, yes, that’s, _yes_.” He comes with a cry and a barely bitten back _fuck_ , and he’s twisted around to watch Aaron’s face as he does so. “Yours,” he whines, his fingers digging tight into the corded muscles of Aaron’s thigh. “Yours,” as his climax ends and he slumps forward, boneless, to regain his breath in the tangled sheets.

After, they’ll sit together in the wicker chairs Spencer abandoned. “Aphrodite comes from the sea, in some versions of the story,” Spencer murmurs. Aaron wonders what his obsession with the myth is, but the other man is smiling. “The consequence of a castration, mind you.” He laughs and the sound is still rocked by grieving, but it’s real. The crushing misery is faded, just a little.

They’re cruel to each other, keeping this up, but Aaron thinks in times like this—when they’re just themselves—it might be worth it.

 

* * *

 

They never let it interfere at work. The moment either of them thought it was interfering with work, that was when it would have ended. There was an irony in that—they were willing to risk skirting the boundaries of dangerous over-dependency on each other but their work still came before their personal safety.

Although, that wasn’t entirely fair. Aaron never allowed danger in the bedroom. Before anything happened, they disarmed, their weapons locked away. He never tied Spencer down. They never bound each other. Aaron dreamed sometimes of Spencer handcuffed to the bed and always woke up hard, but he knew Spencer would never be comfortable with it. Not after Hankel.

They left bruises but never where they couldn’t be hidden and, after Foyet, Aaron couldn’t bear to be pinned down. Sometimes he ordered Spencer to fuck him, or Spencer quietly asked to—sometimes he didn’t have to ask, but Aaron could see the desire to in his eyes—but Spencer was never on top of him to do so.

Spencer only safe-worded once. They never spoke of that moment again.

When they talked about what they were doing, Spencer was always guarded, always pensive. Describing it with vaulted language that drew it up and away from what Aaron knew it really was: just fucking. They were fucking and that was it. There was nothing about _eros_ or the sublime in what they were doing, and he told Spencer this.

Spencer had snorted. “The sublime can be dangerous,” was all he said. “It inspires awe. Awe can be the foundation of fear.”

Aaron had stilled. “Do you fear me?” he’d asked.

And Spencer had murmured, _yes_.

 

* * *

 

He’s drinking more. Haley is dead. His focus in the field is shaken. Emily’s back and everyone despises him for the part he had to play in her survival. He hates them for resenting him. He hates himself for hating them. He hates Spencer because, ever since Emily returned, Spencer hasn’t been home.

All he ever wanted to be was a husband (but he was unfaithful), a leader (but he was flighty), a friend (but he can’t even do that without needing to own the man he loves).

He’s drunk tonight. He’s angry. He sends Jack to his aunt’s and spends the night pacing his house with every step hollowly echoing with Haley’s memories. There’s broken glass in the kitchen and blood on his hand from a cut he doesn’t remember. He’s dizzy, furious, wishing he was weaker so he could take his service weapon and show everyone that even the strong can break, alone—

The doorbell rings. He answers even though he shouldn’t and is stunned to see Spencer standing there. Stunned and relieved and furious, because the man is dressed in a suit that means he’s been out somewhere fancy and his cologne is laced with a fruity bite of something feminine.

Aaron is possessive. He waits until Spencer’s inside and pushes him up against the wall, crowding close and nipping at that fruity throat, grinding his hips hard and being rewarded by a growing pressure against his thigh. He nips, ignoring Spencer’s gasp and the fingers trying to open a gap between them, and fumbles for the other man’s belt.

“Who?” he snarls, because they’ve never been monogamous but for some reason tonight he’s furious about that: retroactive jealousy.

“A stranger,” Spencer breathes, almost panting, “Aaron, what?”

“ _Who?_ ” Aaron barks, and he has the belt undone, those tailored trousers down, and Spencer’s cock in hand. He wants Spencer to say _no one important,_ but knows he won’t. He values everyone too much to do so.

“Her name is unimportant,” Spencer says, eyes glazed. And just like that, Aaron knows he fucked her. He doesn’t know why he’s upset by this. He knows Spencer dates—even knows _why_ he dates; being owned by _Aaron_ is one thing, but Spencer isn’t the broken twenty-four-year old he was after Hankel anymore. He needs his own version of control. Shy dates with beautiful woman he can make feel gorgeous is one way he achieves that. It’s never been a secret between them; Aaron’s even had Spencer get him off by whispering in his ear all the pretty things he does to those women—never admitting their names—while Aaron revels in the imagery it brings.

He wants to fuck him here, right now, but he’s not that far gone that he thinks that’s a good idea. But his go-bag is in the kitchen, lube in the side-pocket. He leads Spencer there with one hand heavy on his hip and pushes him against the granite counter, hands splayed on the countertop and eyes locked on the wall.

He's drunk. He’s stupid. They’ve been playing this game too long and he’s trying to self-destruct.

He shoves Spencer hard against the counter and bares him to the room, ignoring the grunt of irritation, and barely prepares before pushing inside roughly.

Spencer cries out. He bucks back and cries out again as that simply hurts more, his eyes huge and nails skittering as he tries to stop his hips from bumping against the edge. But he doesn’t safe-word. He doesn’t stop Aaron. Just turns huge, hurt eyes onto him and rides it out as Aaron fucks him too hard, too fast, and with too little heart.

“Did you wear a condom with her?” Aaron asks at one point, sweat burning his eyes and aware that Spencer’s expression has turned an odd kind of glazed, like he’s teetering on a point between pleasure and pain and not sure which he prefers. To tip him one way, Aaron curls an arm around him and pulls him tight, fist stroking firmly around a painfully-throbbing cock.

“What? Yes, of course—” Spencer begins, the irritation back, but Aaron pauses and makes a low noise that means _too much talking_ and he falls quiet, unsure.

“Did you use your mouth on her?” Aaron murmurs, using his other hand to drag that pretty mouth around to a broken angle and kissing it, tasting the alcohol he’s drunk and the wine that Spencer has and not tasting anything else, despite thinking maybe he wants to. “Like a _good_ lover.” The kind of lover Aaron’s not being right now.

“No,” Spencer hisses, his eyes tightly shut and feeling tight and hot and a little wet around Aaron’s cock. The wet is concerning. Aaron pauses, hoping it’s lube, shaking himself a little as his hazy brain clears. “She didn’t want that. Aaron, you’re drunk—”

“You’re talking too much,” Aaron says absently, slipping free for a heartbeat and replacing his cock with his fingers, feeling Spencer mewl with relief and sink back onto them. They come out bloodless and he relaxes. But the alcohol is making his head thud and he wants a different kind of relief: not just his own, but Spencer’s as well. But Spencer’s been drinking too, he’s already had sex today. It’s not going to be as easy as whispering _come_. “Did you finish inside her?”

Spencer jerks in his grip, his eyes snapping open and turning suspicious. This is a kink he only ever reluctantly admitted and after asking Aaron not to bring up again. It’s not one they explore. It’s not one they’re ever going to because, while they never use condoms together, Aaron’s a man and not committed to this continuing forever and Spencer desperately and secretly wants a family. Aaron’s breaking the rules right now. It’s not as egregious as his previous slip-up, when he’d taken possession just a heartbeat too far, but it might be enough to end this night.

“I was wearing protection,” Spencer fumbles out, twisting in Aaron’s grip. Too aroused to want to stop but too on edge to be comfortable anymore. “Aaron… don’t…”

Aaron blames the alcohol but maybe he’s just an asshole. “Did you wish you weren’t?”

Wide-eyes meet his, the pink on Spencer’s cheeks deepening and spreading down his throat and chest. Aaron doesn’t break eye-contact, pushing slowly back inside him and sliding his hand down between those spread legs until his fingers are tracing Spencer from cock to below. He doesn’t think Spencer is going to answer. He doesn’t—

He does. “Yes,” he chokes.

Aaron crowds closer, his heart breaking just a little. And he knows why he did it. He knows why he’s pushing.

He knows they’re almost over.

“Think what you could have done to her if you weren’t,” he purrs into the shell of the other man’s ear, and nips. Blows hot air on the cold spot he’s left. “Think how that would have felt. Maybe you should have a second date with her. A third. A fourth. More.” Spencer’s so quiet that Aaron can feel the blood in his ears thudding, and Aaron’s softening without coming—that’s no surprise considering how much he’s drunk tonight—but Spencer’s harder than he’s ever been even as Aaron slips free. “Maybe you should keep dating her until the day she lets you fuck her bare, Spencer, until she lets you keep coming and coming and coming until she’s full—”

Spencer makes a noise like a sob when he comes, and it feels like it takes forever. Aaron holds him the whole time, even as his body keeps trembling and pulsing and shaking, even as he sags in Aaron’s grip and sets up a broken kind of breathing that suggests he wasn’t at all ready to feel like that. Aaron’s hand is dripping, Spencer’s a mess. They pull apart as Spencer staggers away and yanks his pants up, hard.

They stare at each other, streaked with sweat and come and the disgrace of this night.

Spencer speaks first and its damning. “Hephaestus,” he says coldly, and leaves without another word.

It’s the second time he’s safe-worded, and Aaron knows it will be the last. He has a blisteringly cold shower and doesn’t text to see if he’s okay.

They’re over.

 

* * *

 

The first time he’d cheated on Haley, it was with Kate Joyner. They’d found a shitty motel, paid in cash, and he’d fucked her without compunction while knowing he was a broken man.

When Haley had cheated on him, he’d figured it was his just desserts.

He’d told her about Reid, eventually. She’d already known by that point. He’d started working through his guilt by buying her jewellery every time it happened—later he’d blame Reid’s Greek mythology kick and his relentless repetition of Aphrodite’s adultery and Hephaestus’s desperation to retain her. Haley had never worn anything Hotch brought her, which was probably a kindness because he doubted it would have sat nicely. For some reason, the fact that Reid was a man had seemed more important to her than the fact that Hotch was unfaithful.

He hadn’t contested the divorce.

Later, he’d realize that maybe Reid was feeling guilty too.

 

* * *

 

They’re fine at work. It doesn’t affect them.

They don’t speak outside of it.

Aaron wakes from a dream, a barely recollected memory. One of the first few times they’d been together. He’s shaken by the dream, more so than anything else that has happened, and it takes him a while to realize why.

It wasn’t a dream of possession of anger or sex. It was a dream of quietly laying together on a blanket-strewn floor, Spencer reclining naked with a book and his glasses perched on his nose. Aaron, just watching. Wine glasses sat between them, filled with a sweet dessert wine Spencer had brought, the blanket they were curled on rose-red and silky-soft to the touch. There was a cheap supermarket packet of apple tea cakes sat near the wine. They were sticky and a little drunk and utterly happy. _Devotional offerings to Aphrodite can include incense, apples and pomegranates, fragrant roses, Commandaria—a wine from Cyprus—, and cakes made with honey,_ Spencer had read out slowly, seemingly savouring every quiet word. And now that night is only a dream and a shared memory between two people who share very little anymore.

_Oh,_ thinks Aaron, because he’d made it solely about the sex when it really didn’t have to be. He doesn’t miss the sex—it’s almost a relief to not have to play that game anymore—but he does miss him.

 

* * *

 

He’s standing looking out over the Chesapeake Bay when Spencer finds him. The beach is rocky and bitterly cold, the waves quiet as they roll against the shore. They’re far enough south that behind them are the suburbs of Virginia Beach, quietly mourning the victims of the man they’d just put away. Ragged clouds overhead let through weak trickles of yellow sun. Aaron’s shoulders are bowed against the wind.

They stand shoulder to shoulder looking out at the horizon. “No Aphrodite facts today?” Aaron says bitterly. “No more stories about sea-foam?”

“You don’t like when I make those associations,” Spencer says. The silence that falls between them is swollen and unhealthy before Spencer breaks it: “Among neo-Platonists, Aphrodite Ourania is associated with spiritual love, and Aphrodite Pandemos with physical love.”

Aaron knows this one. “A little on-the-nose to bring up a symbol of conjugal discretion, don’t you think?” he teases without heart. “Why the Greek stuff, Spencer?”

Spencer just looks at him, and shrugs. “Myths are long-lasting,” he replies. “And I know how they end. That’s… comforting.”

Ah.

“I’m sorry,” Aaron says quietly. There’s a crab battling a piece of seaweed, and they watch and only flinch a little as a seabird joins the fight. Aaron’s money is on the seaweed, honestly.

“You could have just said you wanted to stop.”

What Aaron should say is _we never should have started._ Or even _I still respect you—what we did changed nothing about that,_ or even _I could have loved you, if I’d let myself._

What he actually says is, “We’re going to be late.” It’s an unsatisfying ending, Aaron thinks numbly, but sometimes things are like that. Sometimes there aren’t any neat, clean conversations that will lance all the pain from a festering wound and leave it healthy again.

Sometimes, there’s just moving on. And they do.

 

* * *

 

In the end, it’s not hard choice.

It’s been three years since they ended what they had and Reid was wrong, all those years ago. Eros, as Hotch finds—love and desire and all the lengths in between—isn’t always selfish. He follows Reid into the building where a woman is about to die.

And Hotch makes sure she doesn’t.

The shot is an easy one. He takes it. Maeve lives.

It’s the least he can do.


End file.
